Testimonials

“Writing poetry is like sharing your mind with someone else that may have felt the same thing.” — Poetry Inside Out student

“Translation helped me learn how to say what I want to say…how to choose my words, and say what I mean for the people who read my poems to understand.” — Poetry Inside Out student

Poetry Inside Out

Poetry Inside Out educates, enlightens, and builds literacy and critical thinking skills through a poetry- and translation-based language arts curriculum that has brought world literature to thousands of students and teachers since 2000. Poetry Inside Out is dedicated to the idea that all students can become literate in the fullest sense of the word, with the knowledge that reading is for understanding and writing is for sharing ideas.

Students study poems by world-class poets in the language in which they were written—Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and many others—and learn the process of literary translation. They then use those translated poems as inspiration and resource for writing their own poems.

As they hunt through the dictionary, engage in spirited debate about word choices, and create their own diverse, playful, and deeply felt poems, students gain an appreciation for the complexities of language and culture, and build the 21st century learning skills—creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration—needed for success in their academic careers and beyond.

Poetry Inside Out workshops are offered as teaching artist-led residencies or as professional development for classroom teachers. In both, students progress from learning basic literary translation skills to mastering poetic structure, form, and figurative language and revising, editing, and performing their work. Poetry Inside Out helps students see themselves in a new light, to think of themselves as learners and writers.

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Highlights

Poetry Inside Out has almost 20 teaching artists in the Bay Area leading in-school residencies. Since 2000 we have taught almost 10,000 elementary through high school students around the Bay Area and around the U.S..

Poetry Inside Out also offers professional development for classroom teachers and has trained teachers in San Francisco, Oakland, New York, San Diego, St. Louis, and Boston, with more sites planned.